Women’s sports grew at UH under her guidance

When Marilyn Moniz-Kaho’ohanohano first contemplated attending the University of Hawaii as a volleyball player, only one woman among the more than 8,200 female undergraduates on the Manoa campus received an athletic scholarship.

The drum majorette at the football games.

Now, as Moniz-Kaho’ohanohano prepares to retire on June 1 as the athletic department’s senior women’s administrator after a 28-year career, UH awards 162 athletic scholarships to female athletes, who make up 55 percent of the school’s participants.

That growth is not by coincidence.

It is, in large part, the result of a vision Moniz-Kaho’ohanohano embraced and painstakingly advanced. As associate athletic director Carl Clapp underlined for the school’s Board of Regents on Thursday, “under Marilyn’s leadership over the years UH has developed a very, very strong approach to Title IX compliance …”

A four-year letterwinner (1972-75) in volleyball and graduate of the Richardson School of Law, Moniz-Kaho’ohanohano returned to campus in 1989 and went on to become the school’s longest-serving administrator of women’s athletics.

In this she was a disciple of the late Donnis Thompson, the determined visionary who was attempting to carve out a place for women in UH athletics when Moniz-Kaho’ohanohano first arrived on campus from Kaimuki High.

It was Thompson, from a tiny cubicle wedged in a temporary ROTC building in a corner of the lower campus, who waged the battles for funds and legislative support that were the underpinnings of her dream of a genuine athletic program for women. All this while also serving as a full-time professor.

Not only did Thompson see what few others couldn’t — or wouldn’t — she had the temerity to refer to her two fledgling sports (track and volleyball) as an “athletic program” and single-mindedly press on even when many looked askance at the notion.

In 1976, at a time when Rainbow Wahine sports had to scrap for gym time with intramural sports, Thompson booked a UH volleyball match against UCLA in Blaisdell Center and, to the wonder of even the second-year head coach, Dave Shoji, deigned to charge admission.

And it would be Moniz-Kaho’ohanohano, who came to Manoa two months after the promulgation of Title IX, to take up the cause, channeling Patsy Mink and Thompson while adding her own resolve. She became a zealous advocate of opportunities for women, persisting through the tenure of eight athletic directors and interim directors to maintain the momentum while the national mood and local support ebbed and flowed.

In times when dollars were tight for all sports and the Rainbow Wahine were counseled to be “just be patient” and wait their turn, it meant Moniz-Kaho’ohanohano digging in time and again to remind fellow administrators that “Title IX is still the law. It is not going away.”

And neither was she. Her opponents might express their frustration with her unyielding drive on behalf of Rainbow Wahine sports, but they came to realize it was from the heart.

Along the way, she hired the school’s first full-time female coach (softball coach Rayla Allison, 1989), drew up and installed UH’s first gender equity policy (1983) and oversaw the reinstatement of track and field and the introduction of four more sports.

“Marilyn has been a true difference-maker for UH athletics,” athletic director David Matlin said. “The department has come a long way in the realm of gender equity and Title IX, mainly due to her efforts, and our student-athletes have reaped the benefits.”

She also became a force on national and conference committees.

Shoji says, “Marilyn was at the forefront of the women’s athletic department at UH, first as a player, then in different capacities, then as SWA. She has dedicated her career to UH athletics and we are grateful to her and wish her well.”

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.